Deliveroo launches Edinburgh tech hub after swallowing Cultivate

From left: Andy Robinson, chief commercial officer at Cultivate; Dan Winn, vice president of engineering at Deliveroo; and Paul Wilson, MD at Cultivate. Picture: contributed

The deal will create the Deliveroo’s first UK tech centre outside of its London headquarters and see Cultivate, based at tech incubator CodeBase, transfer its team to the delivery group with effect from today.

The tech unicorn has unveiled targets to double headcount at the Edinburgh site in the next 12 months, with a long-term goal of creating up to 50 high-skilled jobs over the next three years, more than trebling Cultivate’s current workforce. It intends to create roles across the engineering, product management, user research, design and data science fields.

The two businesses have established a strong relationship in recent years, with the Scottish tech consultancy helping to build the food delivery group’s payments systems, which handle millions of transactions daily.

Following the acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, Deliveroo will use its capital hub to improve payment processes and provide its delivery riders and restaurants with more data to better manage their finances.

Founded in 2013, Deliveroo now operates in more than 500 towns and cities in the UK and internationally, covering western Europe, Australia and parts of Asia.

Cultivate’s chief commercial officer Andy Robinson, who is to become Deliveroo’s site lead in Edinburgh, said: “We have a fantastic relationship with Deliveroo. We were attracted by the array of interesting problems being tackled by their team, and how they are addressing them using modern and emerging technology.

“We’re proud to have built such a great team here in Edinburgh, and today’s announcement is a testament to their hard work and expertise in building world-class software.

“We are excited to continue this work, create highly skilled jobs, and build a centre of tech excellence here in Edinburgh.”

Dan Winn, Deliveroo vice president of engineering, added: “As a British company, Deliveroo is proud to be investing in Edinburgh and creating more high skilled jobs in the UK. Edinburgh is one of the UK’s fastest growing tech hubs, with access to an excellent talent pool of highly skilled people and university graduates.”

CodeBase chief executive Stephen Coleman said the tech campus is “looking forward to having one of Europe’s top tech companies based here at CodeBase”.

Deliveroo has pledged to continue backing community initiatives supported by Cultivate, which include skills development programmes Prewired and Codebar.

The announcement comes a week after US tech company UserTesting announced the launch its European headquarters in the city’s Fountainbridge, with plans to create more than 100 highly skilled jobs by 2022.